Sustainable Preservation—Repurposing a Historic Building to Incorporate High Levels of Building Preservation Levels While Achieving LEED® Platinum Certification
Eric Soladay, P.E., Integral Group
During this session, the speaker will present specific successes and lessons learned of the project's effort to integrate both the building preservation goals and high level of sustainability goals during the design and construction process. The speaker will share lessons learned from the first year of occupancy, as well as present analyzed trended data from extensive power and energy use monitoring and comparison with expected energy performance. Highly energy efficient design goals have forced many past historic building renovations to either lower their preservation goals or their energy related sustainability goals, as these two goals are often seen as opposing. This project has achieved more than 60 percent in energy reductions in a laboratory setting while preserving more than 95 percent of the historic façade, windows, doors, and many other unique building features. The project is now the only LEED Platinum physical science laboratory in the United States within the context of a historical building. Key energy savings measures include load reductions (including laboratory equipment efficiency improvements), decoupling of ventilation and cooling to eliminate reheating, nighttime evaporative cooling generation and thermal energy storage, local hydronic cooling within each zone, variable exhaust stack velocity based on wind velocity and direction, light-emitting diode task lighting, reduced overhead lighting, and low pressure drop, variable flow systems.
The Linde + Robinson Laboratory was built in 1932 at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and was constructed to support the design and construction of the Mt. Palomar Observatory. The functions of the five-floor building with 40,000 square feet of space were teaching, administration, and research. The building was designed to house state-of-the-art scientific equipment, including a coelostat (solar telescope), and includes two revolving domes at the roof to support the coelostat and a night sky telescope. The building received LEED Platinum certification on January 3, 2012.
Building load and circuit monitoring have also been installed as a part of the renovation. Each laboratory, piece of equipment, light fixture, and subcomponent of the mechanical system is monitored and trended in the building management system and building dashboard systems. This level of data acquisition in an operating, highly efficient laboratory will provide the information required to verify expected performance, diagnose equipment issues, and plan for growth and continuous optimization of laboratory energy use. The speaker will present lessons from the analysis of the first year of occupancy, which will end in the fall of 2012.
Eric Soladay is an innovative, collaborative, and goal-oriented mechanical engineer responsible for the procurement, management, and design of building engineering system projects. With a focus on sustainable and efficient systems, and cost- and maintenance-conscious designs, Mr. Soladay brings a calm and reliable creativity to the art of engineering the built environment. As associate principal and science and technology team manager, Mr. Soladay is responsible for the design of critical environment projects. As project manager and mechanical engineer of record at Integral Group, he has led several significant projects, including the first LEED Platinum certified retrofit of a historical laboratory building for the Linde + Robinson Laboratory at Caltech; the Energy Systems Integration Facility at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the most energy-efficient data center in North America with a power usage effectiveness of 1.05; and the net zero energy headquarters building for the Packard Foundation.